The invention relates to a hand exerciser and, more particularly, a hand exerciser for abduction between the thumb and fingers of the hand.
Exercising a human hand has long been thought to have therapeutic value in speeding recovery from injury, for example, and beneficial value in improving performance on musical instruments such as the piano, in athletics, and in simply toning muscles of the body, for example. As a result, many hand exercisers are known.
Many of the hand exercisers, however, only exercise the muscles which contract the hand. One of the most familiar of these is a coil spring connected at opposite end portions to corresponding ends of a pair of generally-parallel handles. The handles are then pivoted about the spring coil which also exercisingly resists movement of the handles toward each other when the handles are grasped and squeezed together with a hand.
Such hand exercisers do not exercise the muscles which abduct the thumb and fingers from each other. Exercising abduction muscles may, however, be therapeutically beneficial as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,455,019 issued June 19, 1984 to Harris or athletically beneficial as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,105,200 issued Aug. 8, 1978 to Unger.